And his life to the Ministers of Death,
Surely will there be over him an Angel,
An Intercessor, one of The Thousand,
Who shall instruct the Sufferer in his duty;"[400:A]
and from the same source was the awful but monitory vision described in the fourth chapter of this sublime poem.
Subsequent poets have embraced with avidity a system so friendly to man, and so delightful to an ardent and devotional imagination. Thus Hesiod, repeating the oriental tradition, seems happy in augmenting the number of our heavenly protectors to thirty thousand, Τρὶς γὰρ μύριοί:—
"Invisible the Gods are ever nigh,
Pass through the midst and bend th' all-seeing eye:
The men who grind the poor, who wrest the right,
Awless of Heaven's revenge, are naked to their sight.